The invention relates to individual protective equipment for an environment that might be subject to nuclear, biological, or chemical contamination, such equipment being said to provide NBC protection.
The invention relates more particularly to individual protective and breathing equipment comprising a helmet having a rigid shell and internal padding, a balaclava-like hood for separating the head from the environment and advantageously provided with ventilation air feed means, the hood being designed to be worn directly on the skin, and a mouth-and-nose face-mask for breathing provided with a duct for connection to an external source of breathable gas and with means for fastening to the helmet.
Various individual equipment sets as defined above are already in existence. In particular, such sets of equipment have been made for the crew members of aircraft that are capable of operating at high altitude, requiring the wearing of a breathing mask capable of being fed from an external source with a mixture that is enriched in oxygen or even with pure oxygen.
For reasons of comfort and of reducing fatigue, people should be required to wear a balaclava-like NBC protection hood only when performing missions where that might become necessary. Proposals have been made to use an inseparable assembly of such a hood fitted with a combined transparent visor and breathing mask (U.S. Pat. No. 4,404,969 and FR-A-2 350 851). It suffers from the severe drawback of requiring two distinct complete sets of equipment to be provided for each crew member.
One of the sources of discomfort in existing hoods that come directly into contact with the skin results from the fact that they are completely closed so that in order to wear a hood it is necessary also to wear a mask. The present invention seeks in particular to provide breathing equipment of the above type that eliminates or at least attenuates the discomfort.